Are you a lark or an owl? In all honesty, I get excited when I wake up around 5 or 6 am, and I start thinking about bed anytime after 7 pm. On the one hand, acknowledging this publicly brands me forever as “uncool”, right? Oh well. I’ll just have to settle for the self-righteousness that comes along assumption that early risers are more virtuous. 😉
At any rate, yesterday I was pleased to get up with my hero, just after dd1 left for work and before dd2 got up for school, that is between 5:45 and 6:15. I showered and dressed, then puttered around and kept him company while he got himself ready for work. When left to myself a little after 7, I sat down to spend time getting to know God, as is my habit; after reading for an hour or so I decided to just lean my head back on the couch for a few minutes … to think about it. You see where this is going, don’t you?
Anyway, when I woke up – at 10! – Proverbs 3:6 was stuck in my thoughts:
6In all your ways (C)acknowledge Him,
And He will (D)make your paths straight.
Honestly, for us very concrete thinkers, passages like this can be really easy to gloss over. “All your ways” is so big it might as well be “none of your ways”. But, since I wasn’t in a hurry to get moving, I began asking myself questions, starting with “isn’t resting when needed acknowledging God?”, through “how do we acknowledge Him in what we eat?”,and ending predictably with “how do we acknowledge God with what we choose to wear?”
Some ways:
- We acknowledge Him as Creator of beauty by harmonizing our clothes with our appearance.
- We acknowledge His sovereignty by accepting how we are made, both physically and in our personality.
- We acknowledge Him as Provider by limiting our wardrobe to what we can reasonably wear.
- We acknowledge His holiness by refusing to dress in a way that would cause another to sin.
- We acknowledge that He came to set us free by not allowing ourselves to be pressed into a mold.
Expressing these things is really the purpose behind the blog. The subsidiary purpose is social. Let the chit-chat begin!
Thanks for a very powerful post.
I”m going to be thinking about this one a lot:
” We acknowledge Him as Provider by limiting our wardrobe to what we can reasonably wear.”
I’ve seen, I think, every reason in the world for not over-acquiring but this one is the most illuminating and, yes, liberating.
this was a great post! Those are some great ways to acknowledge God in our dress! All ways does indeed include our dress! Thank you for this!
I’ve been lurking for quite awhile, but needed to come out of the shadows today to say thanks. I need to do some weeding…I had never thought of my stored clothing as a matter of acknowledging God as my Provider. If I donate some, perhaps God can use them to provide for someone else. Thanks!
Vildy – I don’t know what you think about John the Baptist, who he was, but I was always struck by him telling the crowd:
John answered, “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
Luke 3:10-12
Actually, I get rather confused about John the Baptist myself. 😉
What I’m hearing from this is “don’t buy clothes because it makes you feel good.” It probably sounds out of place coming from a jeans girl, though.
Well, I think we should buy clothes that make us look and feel *pretty*, but not to fill some sort of emotional emptiness. Is that what you meant?
Excellent post! I love to acknowledge the Creator of creativity by making use of the creativity that He has given me!
This was a fantastic post. Wait, it IS a fantastic post. 😉
What a thought-provoking post, Rebecca–thanks.
For me, thrift shopping feels like the most providential way to clothe our family. (Certainly there are other ways that acknowledge God as provider, too–using your talents to sew or simply buying carefully to avoid waste.) I can’t tell you how many times I have taken the $5 in my wallet and let God decide whether it would be better to spend it on a dress for my daughter, say, or a shirt for my husband. When the need is great, the thing we need most (such as a warm winter coat for my dd last fall) seems to come to us, often through diligent thrifting!
I have a church friend who prays what she calls a “thrifting prayer” before she shops, simply asking for guidance and wisdom in using the resources God has given to provide for her loved ones.
That was sort of what I meant, yes. When I dress to feel pretty, though, spats with my dad tend to result, since he’s more conservative than I am.
Even though it’s been said multiple times already – Great post, Rebecca!
Wonderful thoughts.
I definitely have my energy in the morning, so I’m probably not acknowledging God in all my ways by staying up too late so that I don’t get up early enough!!